How to open the gate in The Plucky Squire

Getting the gate open in The Plucky Squire is your first real puzzle and, as such, might confuse you. Finding missing words is obviously the goal but as it's your first encounter with anything like this, it's understandable if you're not 100% sure how to proceed. 

This basically sets up one of the main puzzle mechanics and you'll encounter it again, not long after this when you reach the The Plucky Squire forest puzzle, and later a Plucky Squire books and The Plucky Squire huge bug obstacle. 

The Plucky Squire gate puzzle explained

1. Attack the bush to the left of the sentence to reveal 'gate', pick it up and place it in the first slot. 
2. Head far right to the other page of the book, to a tree surrounded by monsters. Kill them all and hit the tree to release the word 'open'.
3. Pick 'open' and place that in the second slot. 

The Plucky Squire gate puzzle is, as you can see, not too tricky. You just need to place the words 'gate' and 'open' in the missing sections of the sentence to spell out 'the gate is open'. Because this is a story book where words have power, that will then magically open the gate and let you carry on. 

The tricky bit here is that while 'gate' is visible, poking out from behind a nearby bush, the 'open' is nowhere to be seen. If you explore to the right, and the second page of the book, you'll see a tree ringed by monsters. This is basically a set up where, in the process of hitting the monsters, you should hit the tree and dislodge the missing 'open'.  

It is possible, though, to kill all the creatures without hitting the tree, meaning you could miss the word and not be sure what else to try. So if that's was the case, give the tree they were around a good whack to dislodge what you need. It's generally a good idea to get into a habit of hitting all the trees and bushes you can reach, as a lot will drop money and health. 

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